If Osama knew that the name of this courier was known to al Quaeda's enemies, Osama could have stopped using him and prevented us from following him back. Or simply had him killed to prevent any chance of a linkage. Or determined how he was revealed and killed someone else for it.
Keeping secrets about the enemy keeps your people safe and keeps the enemy's status stable so you can find him and destroy him.
But if Julian Assange feels it's right to reveal these secrets in order that we find out what Hillary Clinton said about Nasser's nose-picking, well, then, let Osama go.
They pulled off 9/11 by immigrating in plain sight, openly attending airliner flight schools but asking to get out of takeoff/landing training they said they didn't need, bringing simple box-knives through "are you carrying a bomb in that bassinet, ma'am" security checkpoints, exploited the airlines well-known policy of placating and negotiating with hijackers (the well-known-ness of which led to the compliant attitude of every passenger on those flights, save Flight 93, whose riders only took action when they received cell-phone calls (in the air at 400 mph) that advised them that the hijackers were not intending to negotiate), and flying the planes as giant bombs into literally the biggest man-made landmarks on the planet.
They were hyper-arrogant, not hyper-intelligent. I don't put any sort of situation regarding encryption of data out of thier range of ability.
Some of it may be in RSA with a 4-KiBit key, and some of it may be ROT-13, and some may simply be in plaintext.
Aside from the tautology of "immediate" and "6 months", no, any names or nicknames in this thing will, per the example shown by this action, be useful to the intelligence community for years and years.
They'll create a perp object with an empty real-name field, put the alias in it, link it to the parent node it came from (Osama's picture just grew a forest of trees below it), and fill it in as new information appears. Then, years from now, when someone finds or hears something that fills in that puzzle piece, they'll traverse the trees looking for other linkages, and come up with a new organizational scenario to analyze and exploit.
Wikileaks leaked the very data that identified the existence of a courier to Osama that could be tracked.
If Manning had done his data dump in the past couple of months, and the Obama administration hadn't been eyes-only on the August identification of the courier and allowed the information to be on the SIPRNet, then Wikileaks could have released that, and, as we've seen, Wikileaks doesn't understand what it's doing so it wouldn't know not to tip these guys off.
I won't be surprised a bit if Osama's hard drive doesn't contain a copy of everything Wikileaks has released so far. Nor that al Quaeda had people going through it carefully to assess and shut down the vulnerabilities we may know about them.
If the courier's real name and location had been in any of the Wikileaks releases, Osama could already have been moved.
Wikileaks could have prevented us from getting to bin Laden. And probably would have considered that a good thing.
I have no doubt that the instant the news that Abbottabad had been hit there were a number of people high-up in Pakistan and Afghanistan who browned their trousers.
If we're smart, there won't be any future terrorists, because we'll stop making people feel so disenfranchised and disconnected that killing their fellow man is the only way to get political attention.
See: Libertarians.
Nobody wants their bullshit, but they're not bombing us. If we can bottle how it is that we placate them without actually implementing thier ideas, we'll win the war on terror in perpetuity.
Computers do things in linear time. Even when you calculate O(whatever), all you're doing is telling the user how much linear time his inputs are going to soak up.
So if things are getting slower, it's because they're trying to compute more between user interactions.
So do what we've been doing since the dawn of digital: make it faster. Or wider. Or more parallel.
Sony's one of those Japanese companies with a 500-year plan. They don't just want your money once, they want you carving pieces off yourself for them for generations. Brand-loyalty is a key to that strategy. Being oblivious, inconsiderate, exploitative fucktards is not. That's Ballmer's gig.
>or even making an attempt at keeping your data secure
Given the opportunities for abuse of their online gaming systems, they have put in place rather serious internet security controls. It appears it took inside intervention for this breach to occur. Which means they did good when it comes to the internet part of their security, but not so good when it comes to the human-factors part of their security. But then, even the governments of the world are vulnerable to time-variable human factors.
I couldn't tell if the spam was a result of an account of mine being revealed by Sony (I don't even recall having one, but who knows in this age of demanding accounts be created to access basic information at every website) or if the spammer was merely spoofing having the information. They used "playstation.sony.com" as the hostname in their certainly phony email address, so they're intimating something.
The email consisted of a few random characters (letters and digits) in the subject and a couple mroe in the body. Almost certainly a bounce-test. Likeley winnowing the database to improve its price on the market.
But, anything that can be bounce-tested can be traced to its source. I say we send in the SEALs when they get back from their two-week hookers, booze, and cigars mission.
Slashdot Mirror
The article is balls.
But the concept is valid.
If Osama knew that the name of this courier was known to al Quaeda's enemies, Osama could have stopped using him and prevented us from following him back. Or simply had him killed to prevent any chance of a linkage. Or determined how he was revealed and killed someone else for it.
Keeping secrets about the enemy keeps your people safe and keeps the enemy's status stable so you can find him and destroy him.
But if Julian Assange feels it's right to reveal these secrets in order that we find out what Hillary Clinton said about Nasser's nose-picking, well, then, let Osama go.
If Wikileaks knew the difference between legal secrets and illegal ones, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
The government pretty sternly told Wikileaks not to release any of them, and why.
Wikileaks ignored them.
"We have met the enemy, and they is us."
- Pogo
- Walt Kelley
Shut up and vote, or bitch and moan and remove all doubt about how it got this way.
You would rather Osama get away to lead more terrorist attacks than that you not know the name of his courier?
For every improperly classified document they release, they're releasing thousands of things that should be kept secret.
They aren't competent to do what they are doing, and we're not safe as long as they are making these mistakes.
That depends on whether bin Laden's use of the Internet leads the authorities to institute junk-checks to anyone attempting to surf.
It's still two words.
Mother lode.
They pulled off 9/11 by immigrating in plain sight, openly attending airliner flight schools but asking to get out of takeoff/landing training they said they didn't need, bringing simple box-knives through "are you carrying a bomb in that bassinet, ma'am" security checkpoints, exploited the airlines well-known policy of placating and negotiating with hijackers (the well-known-ness of which led to the compliant attitude of every passenger on those flights, save Flight 93, whose riders only took action when they received cell-phone calls (in the air at 400 mph) that advised them that the hijackers were not intending to negotiate), and flying the planes as giant bombs into literally the biggest man-made landmarks on the planet.
They were hyper-arrogant, not hyper-intelligent. I don't put any sort of situation regarding encryption of data out of thier range of ability.
Some of it may be in RSA with a 4-KiBit key, and some of it may be ROT-13, and some may simply be in plaintext.
If they didn't also take all the post-its, they'll never figure out the encryption keys...
Aside from the tautology of "immediate" and "6 months", no, any names or nicknames in this thing will, per the example shown by this action, be useful to the intelligence community for years and years.
They'll create a perp object with an empty real-name field, put the alias in it, link it to the parent node it came from (Osama's picture just grew a forest of trees below it), and fill it in as new information appears. Then, years from now, when someone finds or hears something that fills in that puzzle piece, they'll traverse the trees looking for other linkages, and come up with a new organizational scenario to analyze and exploit.
The spooks never forget.
But he wouldn't have had a phone to play it on. Maybe not a shitter, either.
Wikileaks leaked the very data that identified the existence of a courier to Osama that could be tracked.
If Manning had done his data dump in the past couple of months, and the Obama administration hadn't been eyes-only on the August identification of the courier and allowed the information to be on the SIPRNet, then Wikileaks could have released that, and, as we've seen, Wikileaks doesn't understand what it's doing so it wouldn't know not to tip these guys off.
I won't be surprised a bit if Osama's hard drive doesn't contain a copy of everything Wikileaks has released so far. Nor that al Quaeda had people going through it carefully to assess and shut down the vulnerabilities we may know about them.
If the courier's real name and location had been in any of the Wikileaks releases, Osama could already have been moved.
Wikileaks could have prevented us from getting to bin Laden. And probably would have considered that a good thing.
Proof that al Quaeda did 9/11?
I have no doubt that the instant the news that Abbottabad had been hit there were a number of people high-up in Pakistan and Afghanistan who browned their trousers.
Check the URI. That's /.
The competent ones build the bombs and recruit the suicide bombers to act as mere mules.
It's not cost-effective to train someone to select targets and build and arm bombs, and then blow them up.
If we're smart, there won't be any future terrorists, because we'll stop making people feel so disenfranchised and disconnected that killing their fellow man is the only way to get political attention.
See: Libertarians.
Nobody wants their bullshit, but they're not bombing us. If we can bottle how it is that we placate them without actually implementing thier ideas, we'll win the war on terror in perpetuity.
As terrorists go, bin Laden was a suit, not a tech.
I expect lots of the stuff on his disk is duplicated on paper around his office.
Is it a phone?
I use my "phone" for phoning and receiving phone calls and talking on the phone maybe...I dunno, 0.6% of the time it's lit up?
It's a computer. If I happened to put a phone in there, then that saves me having also to have a phone.
Though I will get a burner if I think Jack Bauer is on to me. Maybe a six-pack. I ain't stupid.
Computers do things in linear time. Even when you calculate O(whatever), all you're doing is telling the user how much linear time his inputs are going to soak up.
So if things are getting slower, it's because they're trying to compute more between user interactions.
So do what we've been doing since the dawn of digital: make it faster. Or wider. Or more parallel.
>Sony just wanted your money
Sony's one of those Japanese companies with a 500-year plan. They don't just want your money once, they want you carving pieces off yourself for them for generations. Brand-loyalty is a key to that strategy. Being oblivious, inconsiderate, exploitative fucktards is not. That's Ballmer's gig.
>or even making an attempt at keeping your data secure
Given the opportunities for abuse of their online gaming systems, they have put in place rather serious internet security controls. It appears it took inside intervention for this breach to occur. Which means they did good when it comes to the internet part of their security, but not so good when it comes to the human-factors part of their security. But then, even the governments of the world are vulnerable to time-variable human factors.
>You *can* live without their crap.
Sure. And I can live without yours, too.
Aha!
Yes. Of course. If they're into the blu-ray and warranty databases, that explains how I got spammed:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2121626&cid=36014248
I couldn't tell if the spam was a result of an account of mine being revealed by Sony (I don't even recall having one, but who knows in this age of demanding accounts be created to access basic information at every website) or if the spammer was merely spoofing having the information. They used "playstation.sony.com" as the hostname in their certainly phony email address, so they're intimating something.
The email consisted of a few random characters (letters and digits) in the subject and a couple mroe in the body. Almost certainly a bounce-test. Likeley winnowing the database to improve its price on the market.
But, anything that can be bounce-tested can be traced to its source. I say we send in the SEALs when they get back from their two-week hookers, booze, and cigars mission.
If you believe that, then it is true.
If you do not, then it is not.